No one gets to live in abstractions, but many in the media would like you to look away from the potential physical reality of Trump's impact.

When I got married, we hired a videographer to film the event. Though we only booked him for a few hours, he worked overtime, arriving at our apartment around 10:00 AM, and stayed through the end of the reception.

My nephew was our ring bearer. He was three. He had a little suit, with bowtie, and he came by in the mid-afternoon. He hadn’t eaten dinner, and as such, grew cranky.

The videographer caught him on camera, crying, and in our video, there is a slow motion clip of him, my mom fixing his tie as he starts to wipe away the tears.

It is supposed to be cute, and it would be… except I was teaching 8th grade then, and my wedding coincided with our yearly unit on the Holocaust. For some reason, when I saw that part of our wedding video, all I could think about were all the children murdered in concentration camps.

I know this is morbid. I know it is wrong. But I watched my nephew cry on camera, and I started crying.Because I think, for the first time, it really set in that all those children were real. Not that I didn’t know that before, but on some primal level, it hadn’t sunk in for a while. They were somebody’s nephew who gets cranky and starts crying if they don’t get lunch. They were all these somebody’s sons and daughters, to whom we failed. Utterly and forever.

I was reminded of that in reading about last night’s Foreign Film Oscar winner, Son of Saul. The New York Times has a beautiful tribute to the feat accomplished in the movie. Namely, that we are not allowed to make the victims numbers, or faceless, nameless bodies. We must confront them on the subjective merits, meet the main character – a Jewish prisoner – and travel with his perspective as he struggles to provide a Jewish burial for one of the boys in his concentration camp.

Why do I write of this, besides to give thanks and recognition to director, László Nemes? Because there is a man who the media has taken un-seriously. There is a man who has built his political campaign around being outrageous and scandalous.And now he is normalizing horrifying and dangerous ideas. He is making them acceptable to say in the public square.And instead of unmasking him and challenging him, journalists have given him a pass.

They’ve allowed him to hijack press coverage so that he is the only story.

And they have not even attempted to expose him as:

1) A man in the middle of a civil fraud case.

2) A man who is on the verge of starting an international crisis on our southern border.

3) A man who in the span of just one weekend managed to:

Imply the judge in his case cannot be fair because he is Hispanic.

Refuse three times to denounce the KKK.

Retweet a quote by fascist dictator Mussolini, and then refuse to distance himself from the murdering, Italian mobster.

Side with the Chinese government over Tiananmen Square, where that same government murdered peaceful student protestors.

In just one weekend.Where in the everlasting hell has the media been on all this?Wondering whether or not Rubio went too far in joking about Trump wetting himself during last week’s debate.When history books look back on this moment, they will not condemn the many Trump followers who wanted someone to fix Washington, who wanted someone to notice they were hurting, who wanted someone who didn’t look down on them.

When history books look back on this moment, they will not condemn the many Trump followers who wanted someone to fix Washington, who wanted someone to notice they were hurting, who wanted someone who didn’t look down on them. But it will send a resounding rebuke to the media, who has mostly stood by in trembling thrall to a growing monster.

Most of Trump’s supporters are people who are either sick of the B.S. of D.C., or people who have been economically and culturally left behind and held in contempt.History will not deem them unpatriotic.But it will be a resounding rebuke to the media, who has stood by in trembling thrall to a growing monster.Many of the most un-patriotic people in this country can be found on your morning news shows, your cable bobble heads, your apologetic editorialists who either know Trump and think he’s harmless, or don’t know him but want to stay out of his Twitter feed.Shame on you. All of you.This post originally appeared here, on Feb. 29, 2016.

About Jess

Jess is a writer whose current focus is on Education and Politics, and particularly where the two intersect. She is a former teacher of middle and high school English, with nearly seven years of classroom experience. She holds a Master’s degree in Curriculum and Instruction, a Bachelor’s degree in Literary Studies, and a substantial host of opinions on how to improve US schools. You can follow her on Twitter @jesslahitou, and contact her through email at [email protected]

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Excellent writing Jess, and I think it is as a sort of “turn the other cheek” when you (and others like Bernie Sanders) are saying things like “Most of Trump’s supporters are people who are either sick of the B.S. of D.C., or people who have been economically….” But African Americans were the LOWEST numbers who voted for Trump, and I have met many a Blue Collar person who hated Obama simply because he was black and a democrat, just as they hate Hillary for being a “crook” and a ‘bitch”. A person did not have to be immersed in… Read more »